Back on topic.

Apple is now the second largest PC hardware manufacturer in the world. They are now 50% the size of MS in revenue. They own the personal music market, and make a handheld device that (on there first attempt), eclipsed people who have been making phones for years.

All I can say is Apple is in position to try and attempt to take over the living room with success. They have done nothing to prove that's the direction they plan to go, or that it's the market they are after.

So, no, apple is not at the moment going to take over your living room, just you pocket :)

 Actually, they are hell of a lot away from being the biggest PC manufactorer. HP is roughly 6 times as big as them, and Dell somewhere around 5 times. In sales that is, not revenue.

The Iphone hasn't really taken off. For a cell-phone part, 6M in a year isn't all that good.

Saying that they own the personal music market is an exaggaration. That's like saying Sony owned the last 2 generations of console gaming.

They aren't that good at gaining in the money, MS gets 2.5 times as as much as Apple pr dollar your spend.

LOL at the iPhone. You still have to wait in line to buy one. They sell as fast as they can make them. They are 27% of all smartphone sales.

The point is when Apple does something, they do it better then anyone before them.

• Who makes the best smart phone? Apple
  
• Who makes the best OS? Apple (well, Apple uses an open source OS, but they implement it better then anyone)
  
• Who makes the best Laptop Hardware? Apple
  
• Who makes the best MP3 player? Apple.
  
• Who makes the best Movie Set Top Box? Apple (although that's not that great of a market to be in)
  

What does Apple make that is not the best at the market Apple is going after? There mouse sucks I guess.

The point I am trying to make, is if Apple said "let's try and take over the living room", there track records shows that they would do a very good job of it. (with respect to making the best devices).

Also, it depends on what you mean by "taking over". If you mean sales volume (as you seem to be implying), Apple will probably not ever take market share. That's not there vision. They are in the business of making the best products, and the best never sells the most due to cost.

Nothing is free :p

 Aww come on!

They're in the business to make the best products? That's not why they price their Ipod to an even out price. It's to gain monopoly.

Fact is, it's a business. They're in it to make money. If you can't make money, you won't be able to make the best products.

And do you know those things are the best (I have no clue, I'm not really interested in what electronics are the best - believe it or not), or are you just learning this from the press? Because, at least in Norway, they have an insane bias towards Apple.

If they are making the best, kudos to them, but you should also add: Who makes the best XXX, for the dime, because I believe that would decrease their position.

Aside from Apple TV (never owned it), I have owned all the above (I have an Iphone, 3 ipods, and a 17" Mac Book Pro).

I am not an apple fanboy. I have a lot of electronics. I have had 3 Windows smart phones, a dozen windows laptops over the years. I have a high end gaming PC with Vista on it.

I have bought enough crap over the years, to know what's good and what is not. I am also one who has zero brand loyalty. I don't give a shit about Apple. I just care about what I get for my money. With todays products, and what Apple is doing as a company (they took Toyota's Lean principles), they are destroying the competition with the products they deliver.

Once someone else beats them (and some day they will), I will buy there products and never look back. 

And yes, Apple is in the business to make money. The way they make money, is by making the best products. It's there market strategy.

It does sound however, like your point of view stems from your feelings towards Apple, and less to do with there market presence.

EDIT: Oh, and I make my living as a Microsoft Software Developer :p

Do you mean unit sales vs. revenue? That makes sense. But over the past year, if not longer, Apple has continuously gained marketshare, and their desktop sales have been up a lot when PC desktop sales are doing down.

In traditional marketing, you'll learn that 40% marketshare is about what you can get. Nokia, the biggest cell phone manufacturer in the world, has their marketshare thereabouts, and it has been there for years. iPod has, what, 70% of the mp3-player markets. That's about as close to owning the market as you're going to get without a total monopoly. Even now, Apple is criticized for having a de facto monopoly in mp3 markets.

As for the comment about Apple's ability to make money, you have to remember that they are an integrated hardware-software company. Hardware has a certain, non-negligible manufacturing cost which limits the margin whereas software has negligible manufacturing cost and the margin closes in on 100% the more you sell. For what it does, Apple is a money-making machine, and it is reflected in their stock price.

It must be the loss of intelligability in my responses.

I had a co worker read this stuff and she understood what I am saying.

Virtual OS hosts anothe.. I'm not even going there actually, Plaupis I see one loop hole with any conversation in this area regarding you specifically, I'm going to try to jump through it here.

You accepted in your response that I'm talking about my experience then you go on to tell me my experience will change with more additions to XMB as more APS begin to emerge on the menu.

I don't deal with what might be when it comes to debates and when I reffer to Home being a OS guess what I was dealing with what might be, which means I am not putting anything regarding that up for debate, and yes guess what that means? It means that every single word typed in regards to that subject percipitating a debate would mean your not debating with me.

I always say I don't debate what I don't know, you seem to be trying to get me to do that, I refuse to do it, all the information you tell me until I find a use for it is useless to me, and seems to be just a blur. the reason for that is mainly because I don't care, antagonism isn't debate in injecture isn't substance.

I'm not saying that what your spewing is useless generally, general terms... anyway I'm saying that to me for the purposes of my post here, the original post and the only post that matters for content, I don't care about anything around that.

I have no reason to have to defend my opinion on something, somethings aren't up for debate, however I do love typing so I can actually spend a week going on and on about how I'm not debating with you while you find ways to continue your arguement.

@Mafoo welcome to the sideshow, have a seat and wait in line, the main events about to start and you can make yourself the star.

The thing about mixing refferences like your doing is that it only leads to confusion when taken with everyone elses refferences, but in the end we are all saying the same thing. Of course it would be nice if I explained more and more and more, like what Plaupis reccomends, but oh come on, since when does a person have to explain what they feel about a product they bought?

I'm just happy certain persons are taking breathers.


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Plaupis - I don't know what you want... if your saying his is a debate then my guess is like any debate there has to be a winner, so I'll try to end this in a short and sweet way, you win. If you want to continue, be my guest, I'll still respond to anything that deals with me, even if it's pointless... something may come up that I can profit from... like when rocketpig named 'Carbon' as the GUI for Mac OSX.

Oh yea I like your definition of Virtual OS but honestly you need to take that up with PC Gamer as thats where I saw the term used to reffer to what Home could be developed into within the next 10 years if it's successful. Of course I'm responsible for my own grammer, but as far as I'm concerned this is a forum board and slang is fair game.

Sorry, that last post was a bit harsh against Apple, but that it is mainly because I've heard that Apple makes the best so many times, with little to no proof.

Plapatius, no, I meant in concrete unit sales, not unit vs revenue. As for the part about owning the market, I think it's simply that we use different meanings of the word.

To own a market, I believe you have to have a close to monopoly.

I also checked a bit on your last comment, and I found this, which is kind of interesting.

Apple loses money on Ipods sold in USA, and go even in most countries. They earn in some countries where prices are high, but their overall Ipod hardware sales are at a slight loss.

They lose money on Iphones sold.

They earn minimally from their Macs sold, at least the ones I looked at.

Apple TVs - no idea.

So looking at this, they earn pretty much all their money from Itunes, (and a tiny bit from Mac software).

Selling 5 million songs a day isn't all that bad :D

Maybe the reason we seem to have so much trouble understanding each other is because I'm an engineer and I like clear definitions of things. I didn't know you took your concept of virtual OS from PC Gamer, I haven't looked at what they say about it but I get the feeling they are trying to redefine an already existing term, or rather two terms.

Anyway, the gripe I and rocketpig had with your original statement is that comparing an operating system to a GUI-app is not very fruitful, especially since your original statement "when home comes out that will be the ultimate virtual OS with XMB it's a win win formula" implied that it's a given that Home virtual OS + XMB > OS X. My last post was an attemp to take a look what might happen in that scenario,how it would change things, especially the XMB. Actually, I would be genuinely interested to think about how the XMB could function as the GUI for an OS. But you don't seem to be interested in going there, so I guess we can call it a day then.

Can you give me the source for that? My understanding is that Apple make money on hardware, but the way they account for it is a bit complicated. Apparently, the income from iPods/iPhones is spread out over 2 years, or 8 quarters, though I'm not 100% sure on this. English is not my native language and some of the accounting terms are quite hard to grasp even in my native language, let alone in English.

I recall, however, statements from Apple regarding the AppStore that they see it as something like the iTunes Store, adding to the value of iPod/iPhone, but not really creating that much income for them. Though, at 5 million songs a day, the iTunes store would create around 2 billion dollars of revenue per year, and I can't imagine it would be running at cost. Anyway, since Apple reported 1 billion dollars of profit for the last quarter, and by your numbers iTunes creates "only" 500 million dollars of revenue per quarter, it's apparent that Apple makes most of the money with hardware and software .